[Arm-netbook] Improving the wiki, build and test processes for allwinner kernel and ubuntu images for the Mele A1000/A2000

[lkcl luke]

On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Craig Whitcombe
<craig.whitcombe at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Today I finally got to sit down and work on getting my Mele A2000 up
> and running.

 hooray!

> Let's just say that the process could've gone a lot smoother! I had to
> bother people in IRC over things as trivial as the username and
> password of the image.
>
> Most of my problems were due to the wiki lacking in accurate
> information,

 that's not good.  this is the standard of documentation that i'd
expect: http://dev.odroid.com/projects/linux/

 the odroid project, i went through the instructions, they were
accurate, easy to follow, and i had absolutely no problems.

> and being very linux centric.

 that's... acceptable.  ish.  as long as there's a link to somewhere
that you can read up on.  fine line, here, between telling people to
"press return after typing each command" and... :)

> The noobs will come.

 they'll be directed to the forums [which will be set up soon enough]

> It will happen. The media center communities are all over this device.

 yes.

> You have a choice of either putting up with hundreds of emails to this
> distribution list with people asking what you consider stupid
> questions, or you can put the foundations in place early and use these
> noobs as a resource for testing and verification of the allwinner
> kernel

 absolutely.  well... the use of a wiki with sparse CSS, and the use
of a mailing list _not_ a pee haych pee bee bee is quite deliberate:
it's to attract those people for whom AJAX and pretty CSS is just...
so much horseshit:)  at some point there will be a nice wishy-washy
forum, but not right now.  thus, the foundations are as they've been
planned to be: absolute basic information, in an acceptable format for
software (libre) developers.

 ... but what's _not_ ok is that there's basic information missing.

> What I propose to do is the following:
>
> We decide now on a linux distro that we will use and stick to.

 ah, no.  i agreed with everything you said up until this point :)
rhombus-tech.net is *not* a "media centre resource solely and
specifically for the A10 no wait actually exclusively the Mele A1000
device and f***-all else" - it's a resource and a gateway between
mass-volume china factories and free software developers.

 the roadmap is that there will be dozens of CPUs, several
configurations of EOMA CPU cards per CPU, and dozens of I/O Boards
(devices).  exactly how all of these are supported i really don't know
yet - it's going to be hellishly busy.  but, we'll adjust accordingly.

> I
> propose ubuntu because people have already had good success with that
> and the distro itself is very user friendly.

 there has to be *more* than what there is.  i will at some point be
adding openembedded recipes and getting those submitted upstream into
their bitbake repo, then adding a wiki page on how to build e.g. the
angstrom distribution (ok, probably just the "helloworld" example
distro, it's quicker).

 openembedded, as it builds eeevverything from source, is like a
litmus test for software (libre) systems.  if you have to "go download
a binary tool" you're doing something wrong.  so although it's not
very popular it's strategically quite important.


> I update the wiki as follows:
>
> Break the existing page down into more sections,

 yes - i started on that, one distro each for the mele jobbie.

> some of these newly
> created pages will be updated regularly with new .torrent or http
> links to the most recent ubuntu.img file, and the most recent
> allwinner kernel.deb file. The image file needs a supporting readme!
> eg date of build, known issues, post installation steps, correct
> username and password etc.

 mmm... sounds complicated.  work through it: feel free to knock
yourself out, let's see how it goes, see what you come up with ok?

> Bandwidth will of course be an issue, so we need to agree on
> bittorrent as a supporting distribution mechanism for the image and
> kernel.deb updates

 that's a good idea.  that's a bloody good idea.

> Someone will need to build the kernel.deb files

 yep, we're on the case there.  kent's offered the use of a server as
a build farm (thank you kent!)

> For this we need to come up with a good and complete generic kernel
> config and a script to build the packages. Any volunteers for this?
>
> I will start the modifications to the wiki tonight to at least
> properly reflect the flashing process of the currently linked image
> (for both windows and linux users), and the post installation steps
> that are required.

 hurrah.

> P.S I can use the 'n' word because I am one. It's OUR word :)

 hurrah! :)  err.. what's the 'n' word? oh, noooob, riiight :)
well... i wouldn't classify you as a noob: you got through it, you
subscribed to a mailing list and you want to hack on the wiki page -
that spells "f*****g champion" to me, not "n00b".

 /peace

 l.

 l.